The best ways to buy Ikea in Malta

The quick and easy way to shop Ikea in Malta

If you want to go direct to source, you can certainly shop directly at a nearby Ikea, like Sicily, but then you also have to arrange the shipping of the items to Malta which can be expensive and, with the current pandemic, just an overall nightmare with closed shops, shipping delays and more. Using local companies to do all this for you is very simple, hassle free and not as expensive as you might think.

⭐ Great selection of Ikea items in Malta

You can surf their sites to see what they have in stock and many of them stock other brands as well as Ikea so the selection is great. They tend to be quite up to date and have most items you’d find in Ikea, with sold out stock being regularly replenished.

⭐ Quick delivery

In my experience, items generally arrive within 3-4 weeks of placing the order, which is not bad considering that all areas of the supply chain have been experiencing delays for the last year due to Covid. Most of the stores will keep you regularly informed of progress and they will do multiple deliveries if some items are in stock and others aren’t, so you aren’t kept waiting for the whole order.

⭐ They can build Ikea furniture for you

Some shops even have an option to pay extra to have the items built for you on delivery. It is an extra expense and probably not worth it if you’re getting just a few smaller bits but for someone doing a larger renovation like a whole kitchen or a few rooms of furniture I’d say this is worth every penny.

😩 Horrible websites

The main peeve I have with these services is the websites are all AWFUL. The best of the bunch is Megastore where you can at least search for items on mobile and generally find what you need, but for all of them you really need to know what you want. What I tend to do is browse the actual Ikea.co.uk website as it’s easier to use, more visually appealing and with much better categories, search function and photos. Then once I have a list, I will search the name or the product number on the local stores and compare prices and I find Megastore is the only website where it’s possible to do this.

Maltashopper and Maltafurniture are the worst websites.

Maltashopper: ugly, cluttered, search does not work on mobile and broken ‘messenger’ plugin hides too much of the screen
Maltafurniture: does not even seem to have a search function and the categories are unhelpful with items mislabeled + the same broken messenger plugin

😩 Sneaky pricing

Update: July 31st 2022

MaltaShopper have stopped doing this. They now show the full price of the item in the listing and only add a €20 delivery fee at checkout. However, they still include the higher price, they just don’t hide it. I checked a few items and they were quite a bit more expensive. For example the Pinnig Bench is €99.99 with MaltaShopper, plus €20 delivery although as ITEM is under €100, they wont deliver. The Pinnig Bench is €87.87 with Megastore with free delivery and they will take the order.

Old info:

On Megastore, for example, the price of each item is the full + correct price. Then if the order is over €50, shipping is free, or you can pay extra for evening delivery (€5) or named day delivery (€10). However on some other sites, such as Maltashopper, the items LOOK a lot cheaper, but when it comes to checkout, they add a 25% shipping charge on each item, PLUS a €20 delivery charge (to GROUND FLOOR only).

So if you search for this product code: 002.287.05

on Maltashopper it’s listed as €199
on Megastore it’s listed as €242.78
go to checkout on Maltashopper adds €49.75 “shipping fee”, plus €20 delivery to ground floor for total of: €268.75
go to checkout on Megastore, no extra charges for a total of: €242.78 making it €25+ cheaper.

Megastore - no hidden costs + better service

Over €25 cheaper for this one item, plus the service is just so much better. They won’t stand and watch me struggle up the stairs with the furniture, most of them offer to help and bring it up the few steps for me and the website is not great, but useable.

Maltashopper - more expensive + high minimum order amount

Maltashopper have recently revamped their website so the search now works and there is no FB plugin that blocks the whole page. The website is quite usable now. However it’s considerably more expensive. I checked a few items around the €100 mark and Maltashopper was more expensive by around 15% on average, PLUS with €20 delivery on top, making them more like >30% more expensive.

Maltafurniture - poor website but interesting design service

The website is really impossible to use due to having no search function (that I could find) and the categories being so poorly set up that you simply cannot find anything, however they do offer a design service which I’m not sure if the others do. If you commit to buy the items from them, they offer a free design service to help you plan out your kitchen, for example, although I haven’t used this service so cannot speak to the quality, but maybe one worth a try!

AB Imports - no website, no updates, but helpful once it arrives

I would usually always use Megastore for my Ikea delivery but I wanted a particular sofa and it was no longer on the Megastore website and their CS said they had no plans to add it. I checked the other services but AB Imports was the only one who could help me with this sofa. For this service you review the Italian Ikea website, email them the links of everything you want and they get back to you with a quote.

They got back to me very quickly, they added a €175 shipping charge on top of the standard cost of the sofa. I had to pay a 50% deposit, then after I heard the deposit I didn’t hear anything. I contacted them a few times for an update but I only heard back after 3 weeks when the item had arrived. I expected it to take around that long, but the lack of any clear updates was super concerning and there were times I wondered if I had been scammed.

Eventually though they confirmed they had the item ready and we arranged a delivery date and slot and the guys were really great to carry the item up the 15 steps for me. Price-wise they are around the same as Megastore (based on the one item I bought), maybe a bit more expensive, but they are a good alternative for when Megastore doesn’t have the large items you’re looking for.

My tips for the smoothest Ikea shopping experience in Malta

Use Ikeas own website to browse

None of the Ikea in Malta websites are well designed enough to browse. So my advice is to follow Ikea on Instagram, browse the Ikea website in your native language and check out their online catalogue. They have much a much nicer website for browsing by room, by category and a lot of inspirational boards on the site to show you how to style a whole room. Make a list of the names or SKU numbers then search the products on the sites in Malta.

Pay a bit extra for the nominated day / time delivery

The sites claim that the drivers will call you when the items are in stock to ‘arrange delivery’ but this means they will call you when they are 5 mins away. If you are likely to be out at work, or on a call, or it’s a big order that’s going to interrupt your day, pay the extra €5 for evening delivery or €10 for the delivery where you can set a time/date.

Don’t expect help getting the items in

In my experience, the Megastore drivers are the most helpful and the most likely to do that little bit extra to help you get the items in but they don’t have to and they won’t always. My apartment is first floor, with no lift, but there are only around 15 steps and not all the drivers will help carry the stuff up and it’s often too heavy for me to even think about carrying up. Even with apartments with a lift, you' still might need help getting the items from the front door into the lift and from the lift into your apartment so if you don’t think you’ll manage, plan to have help.

Inspect the items ASAP

The Ikea in Malta companies do not give you much leeway when it comes to returns. Some of them will charge you for return shipping to their warehouses in Poland or Italy. Some will charge only for local collection, but it’s still a painful thing to have to pay especially if an item arrives damaged. Most give you a very short window (I am talking a few hours) from time of delivery to inform them of any damage. At best, for large orders they might give you 24 hours then if you notice damage after 24 hours there is no guarantee they will refund or pick up the item without extra shipping costs. So inspect immediately!